Curriculum

by Oliver Cassidy

Two weeks ago in a fifth grade classroom in Boston, a bespectacled boy raised his hand and asked the teacher - Miss Hunt, 24 years old, newly-hired - if it was true that "early Americans stole their land from the Indians." The classroom grew quiet. Miss Hunt asked the boy where he'd heard such a thing. "My dad told me," he said. Miss Hunt folded her arms and sighed, then rose from her chair, strolled to the front of her desk and leaned on its edge. "Your father's mistaken," she said, not quite evenly.